MW Multimillion-dollar CEO pay at these 20 low-wage companies is costing you. This is the only fix.
By Sarah Anderson
CEO pay at the 'low-wage 20' averages $18.6 million, while many of their median workers rely on taxpayer-supported Medicaid and SNAP
Rising costs are just part of America's affordability crisis. Poverty-level wages are a major factor.
Miserly companies adding to employee misery forces more people to rely on government assistance - which is a nice way of saying that American taxpayers get the bill.
At America's 20-largest low-wage employers, median wages won't get you a used car or a two-bedroom apartment. In many cases, workers are forced to rely on government benefits such as SNAP or Medicaid.
CEOs of the "low-wage 20," on the other hand, don't exactly have to worry about putting food on the table or paying doctor bills. Their annual compensation in 2024 averaged $18.6 million.
How can U.S. policymakers ensure that all workers in the world's richest country can afford basic necessities? When politicians talk about an "affordability crisis" in the U.S., they're usually talking about the rising costs of housing, healthcare, groceries or other essentials. Those are major concerns - and now the economic shocks stemming from the Iran conflict have made them all too relevant.
But policymakers haven't talked nearly enough about another driver of the crisis: low wages. To make life affordable for working Americans - especially in challenging times like these - we need to raise them.
At Walmart $(WMT)$, for example, America's largest employer, half the employees earn less than $29,469 per year. That's significantly below the income limit for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid and SNAP food aid. Meanwhile, former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon retired earlier this year with a massive fortune, including an estimated $650 million worth of the retail giant's stock.
Taxpayers are effectively subsidizing executive's mansions, private jets and all the other trappings of excessive wealth.
Miserly companies adding to employee misery is forcing more people to rely on government assistance - which is a nice way of saying that American taxpayers get the bill. And that leaves these and other companies with more money to pay executives and shareholders. Taxpayers are effectively subsidizing executives' mansions, private jets and all other trappings of excessive wealth.
A new Institute for Policy Studies report exposes the extent of the problem among the 20 largest employers of low-wage U.S. workers - a group of companies we've dubbed the low-wage 20. Together, these leading retail, hotel, meat-processing and food-service companies employ about 6.7 million Americans - one in every 25 U.S. workers.
We found that, in addition to Walmart, 14 other low-wage 20 companies had median pay in 2024 below the $35,631 income limit for a family of three to qualify for Medicaid. Another dozen had median pay below the $33,576 family threshold for SNAP.
For millions of working families, the pocketbook pain is getting even worse under the One Big Beautiful Bill that President Donald Trump signed last summer. Deep cuts to public assistance in this new law are expected to kick 7.5 million Americans off Medicaid and 4 million off SNAP. These projections are based on the expectation that many low-wage workers who are eligible for the benefits will lose them anyway because of the bill's onerous bureaucratic hurdles.
Read: Aaaargh! Trump's new budget hikes spending by $1 trillion more than in 2025.
Not a single low-wage 20 company has median pay even close to the income level needed to afford the current U.S. average rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
Policymakers are gutting the social safety net while working families are already reeling from high costs for housing, transportation and other essentials.
Not a single low-wage 20 company has median pay even close to the income level needed to afford the current U.S. average rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
At seven low-wage 20 companies, the typical worker makes less in an entire year than the $25,533 average price of a used car - never mind the cost of keeping the gas tank full during an oil shock.
Much of the debate about the current "affordability crisis" focuses on lowering costs. But wage suppression is the real root of the problem. For decades, corporate executives have been quashing workers' efforts to gain a fair reward for their labor.
Amazon.com (AMZN) and Starbucks $(SBUX)$ are clear examples. Thousands of workers at these two low-wage 20 corporations have voted to unionize. But over the past four years, executives have deployed various stalling tactics to block contracts. At Lowe's, executives have fired pro-union workers before organizing campaigns could even get off the ground.
This type of labor suppression is a major reason wages have not kept pace with productivity gains for the past 45 years. If they had, paychecks for typical workers would be roughly 40% greater, the Economic Policy Institute said.
Read: The surprising reason Americans are working longer than they used to
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The low-wage 20
Company CEO CEO pay Median worker pay CEO/worker pay ratio U.S. employees Amazon Andrew Jassy $1,596,889 $37,181 43 1,192,263 AutoZone Philip Daniele $9,198,465 $30,637 300 122,935 Best Buy Corie Barry $16,150,300 $31,141 518 75,170 Chipotle Mexican Grill Scott Boatwright $19,140,000 $16,666 1,148 127,820 Costco Wholesale Ron Vachris $12,354,831 $47,092 262 219,000 Darden Restaurants Ricardo Cardenas $12,004,427 $22,755 527 186,000 Dollar General Todd Vasos $2,152,357 $18,951 114 185,804 Dollar Tree Michael Creedon $9,246,835 $15,602 592 209,517 FedEx Rajesh Subramaniam $12,398,210 $42,990 288 370,000 Home Depot Edward Decker $15,574,678 $35,196 443 419,600 Kroger Rodney McMullen* $15,631,028 $34,213 457 409,000 Lowe's Marvin Ellison $20,164,912 $30,606 659 268,000 MGM Resorts William Hornbuckle $15,819,584 $47,607 332 63,000 O'Reilly Automotive Brad Beckham $2,829,492 $31,854 89 89,648 Ross Stores Barbara Rentler $16,994,251 $9,602 1,770 107,000 Starbucks Brian Niccol $95,801,676 $14,674 6,666 211,000 Target Brian Cornell** $20,407,603 $27,090 753 440,000 TJX Ernie Herrman $23,482,528 $15,002 1,565 273,717 Tyson Foods Donnie King $22,773,094 $43,417 525 119,901 Walmart Doug McMillon*** $27,408,854 $29,469 930 1,600,000 Total 6,689,375 Average $18,556,501 899
Note: All data are for 2024 except stock-buyback figures, which cover the six-year period of 2019-2024. *Resigned March 2025.**Retired Feb. 1, 2026. ***Retired Jan. 31, 2026.
(Sources: CEO pay, median pay, pay ratio: corporate proxy statements and AFL-CIO Paywatch database. U.S. employees: 10-K reports and proxy statements, with the exception of Amazon and TJX. For those firms we found the figure for 2024 U.S. employees in their EE-O1 reports. Stock buybacks: WSJ Markets data.)
Achieving affordability
We've waited too long for the CEOs of low-wage employers to share the wealth with their workers.
How can policymakers ensure that all workers in the world's richest country can at least afford the basic necessities?
Congress could finally raise the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 for 16 years. Policymakers at both the federal and state levels should also adopt stronger worker rights laws, so employees can organize for higher pay.
The U.S. could also increase taxes on companies with huge gaps between CEO and worker pay, creating an incentive to both rein in executive compensation and raise worker wages. One survey found that 80% of Americans would support a tax hike on corporations that pay their CEOs 50 or more times what they pay their median employee. The average pay gap at low-wage 20 corporations stands at 899-to-1 - jaw-dropping even compared with the already-shocking 285-to-1 average for the S&P 500 as a whole.
We have waited too long for the CEOs of low-wage employers to share the wealth with their workers. If all working Americans are going to earn at least enough to cover their cost of living, policymakers will need to make it happen.
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies $(IPS)$. She is the author of the new IPS report, "America's 20 Largest Low-Wage Employers and the Affordability Crisis."
Also read: Why is everything so expensive? America has a wage problem - not a price problem.
More: What's an 'E-shaped' economy - and where do you fit in it?
-Sarah Anderson
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April 06, 2026 09:42 ET (13:42 GMT)
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